I’ve lost count of the number of radio/podcast talk shows that have interviewed me over the past twelve years; many of those shows are considered paranormal. Most Americans, and Westerners in general, would classify modern-pterosaur investigations as paranormal. I can understand that. But more than once I’ve encountered a paranormal explanation that involves something like a time tunnel in which a pterodactyl can fly into our time and space and then disappear from our modern reality; I’ve struggled to find words that express how displeased I am with that imaginative interpretation. Why are so many Westerners so averse to considering the obvious implications of worldwide sightings of living pterosaurs?

How deeply we have been indoctrinated into the assumption that all dinosaurs and pterosaurs died out many millions of years ago! Yet how rarely, if ever, has any scientist explained, in the media of television or widespread print, why all of their species must have become extinct so long ago!

Take the time to insulate yourself against generations of indoctrination into the Western philosophy of total extinctions of basic types of life. Without protection, your skin will become numb, and your eyes, snow-blind. You need to know what people have been encountering around the world, before you can see clearly what’s in the Ptp photo.

In that same book, we read the following about the apparent Civil War photograph called “Ptp:”

The real “problem” in this photo of a Pteranodon-like thing is that the thing looks like a Pteranodon.

Skeptics say that fact proves it must be a fake; I say that fact, taken with the most credible testimonies of eyewitnesses, proves that the universal extinction assumption is a dogma needing to be put on a leash.

Conclusion

Why do so many Americans (and other Westerners) seem to take it for granted that all species of pterosaurs much have become extinct many millions of years ago? It comes from generations of deep indoctrination into the dogma of the universal extinctions of basic forms of life, especially dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

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As a side note, the cryptozoology book Searching for Ropens and Finding God says this:

Some authors of paranormal books have served the cause of truth by including modern reports of these featherless flying creatures: Big Bird (Gerhard), and Bird From Hell (McIsaac). Even The Min Min Light, The Visitor Who Never Arrives, by Fred Silcock, enlightens us to the possibilities of bioluminescence in large flying creatures, although he writes only about owls.

Scientific methods may be used in researching and searching in cryptozoology, yet a cryptid, by definition, is not an animal being studied in a laboratory, by a science professor; it is a creature known more from eyewitness testimony.

Look at a box of mac ‘n cheese or frozen chicken nuggets, the ones with tasty shapes of dinosaurs. Notice that some of those shapes have wings, like what many of us call pterodactyls. Did you notice the word prehistoric on the box? Now notice what small children are taught.

The credibility of these young men impressed Whitcomb (who was a forensic videographer at that time). Their demeanor convinced the American that they were telling the truth about the huge ropen that they had seen flying over Pung. The descriptions suggest that the ropen of Umboi Island is indeed a living pterosaur.

In addition, a scientist (Clifford Paiva, a physicist) has found a number of evidences for the authenticity of the image of the apparent Pteranodon in the older Ptp photo. These include consistent shadows under the boot of the soldier who stands in front of the animal, shadowing consistent with those found on and under the animal. In other words, no Photoshop manipulation was involved in pasting that soldier onto an image of an apparent modern pterosaur.

Of all the names we might consider for these animals, let’s now use Unidentified Flying Creature or UFC. The following will be set aside for the moment, although some or all of them could apply:

ropen

dragon

pterosaur

pterodactyl

flying dinosaur

fiery flying serpent

Mysterious Disappearances of People

Humans can go missing for many reasons, the least common, quite possibly, from being carried away by a “flying dinosaur.” Yet among the strangest of cases of missing people, the circumstantial evidence has mounted up to this bizarre conclusion: The best explanation for some of these is that people are carried away into the air.

This about the following. Dogs often fail to track or follow the scent for a short distance and stop. I know that some people will suggest a Bigfoot carries away people; but how do you explain a dog that tracks a man to a vertical cliff in Yosemite? That man had neither the physical ability nor the climbing equipment to ascend vertically. The direct interpretation is simple: Something lifted that man up into the air near that cliff. (This does not mean that the UFC flew straight up, that would be unnecessary and exhausting; that was simply the spot where the man’s body was lifted up into the air as the UFC flew alongside the cliff.)

The nonfiction paperback Missing 411 Western United States & Canada, by David Paulides, mentions many cases where tracking dogs could not track. That does not necessarily mean those dogs were afraid of the scent of a Bigfoot, a scientifically non-classified primate reported to live in North America. Those dogs could just as well have an aversion for following the smell of a giant pterodactyl. Yet the best explanation we have, for the moment, is that some of those persons are lifted up from the ground.

Concerning the disappearance of eight-year-old Dennis Johnson, in Yellowstone National Park in 1966, a newspaper quoted one of the searchers: “It was nearly as if he had been snatched from the face of the earth.” Others have made similar statements about strange disappearances.

Clothing or Shoe Found Missing From a Found Person

It’s not very unusual for one shoe or one or more articles of clothing to be missing from a live person or body. This can be explained by the victim falling out of a shoe or shirt or pants or coat, while being carried a short distance above the ground. The shoe or clothing or shoe is then dropped in one location while the unidentified flying creature turns around and flies back to look for its prey. That is why some of the survivors are found in bushes, where the vegetation both cushioned the fall and hid the person from the returning predator.

Many other cases give significant circumstantial evidence that large flying creatures have, on occasion, carried away a child. Many such cases have no resolution, meaning no child or body was ever recovered.

This two-year-old [Mike McDonald] was found fifteen miles from where he became missing, in 1945 in southern Arizona, asleep in a small cave. Like the case in Australia, he was found the day after he disappeared. Mike had no injury other than a small cut on one foot.

I would say the substance ejaculated from the mouth or head of the pterosaur is a mist, described by one eyewitness as a “smoke.” This very well could be part of the origin of old legends of fire-breathing dragons.

The apparent Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur called ropen is a cryptid, and that means we are dealing with cryptozoology. Scientific methods may be used in researching and searching in cryptozoology, yet a cryptid, by definition, is not an animal being studied in a laboratory, by a science professor; it is a creature known more from eyewitness testimony.

One paleontologist, Dr. Donald Prothero, has gone far astray from scientific methods in his post about “fake” pterosaurs. It’s devoted to attacks against me, Jonathan Whitcomb, as he mentions my religious beliefs and proclaims my dishonesty, in spite of my explanations for my use of two pen names in a minority of my writings.

The question now is this: Is it better for a scientist to use non-scientific methods to ridicule, through bulverism, someone he disagrees with or for a cryptozoologist to use scientific methods to examine the credibility of the existence of the cryptid called ropen? I choose the latter.

I now respond to Dr. Prothero by quoting from my Searching for Ropens and Finding God (4th edition).

The paleontologists are rare who take notice of my associates and me, at least through mid-2014. When one has commented on what we declare about modern pterosaurs, it’s usually with a word like “extinction” but in a difference sense: the demise of all species of pterosaurs. Am I slicing quarks? I know of nobody who denies that many pterosaurs may have lived without leaving any fossil. Beware of the fog around two meanings of a word. Even if all species of pterosaurs known from fossils had become extinct long ago, we live in the real world of the present, a world in which people report encountering living pterosaurs. [page 293]

Mr. Collini and Mr. Cuvier [two centuries ago] assumed the strange creature that left fossil evidence of its existence was extinct. What else could they think? They knew nothing of anything like that in the modern world. Now look at the key word: assumed.

Almost all biologists, from then until now, have assumed all species of pterosaurs became extinct, for those humans apparently knew nothing of anything like them in the modern world. Paleontologists are even more rare than eyewitnesses of ropens, and if one fossil expert saw one dragon fly overhead, how could the encounter be reported? That eyewitness would probably say nothing.

Gradual accumulations of new fossil species were too gradual to alert anyone. Alert them to what? Simple probability. If we were to dig into a cliff, looking for fossils, what might we find? Quite likely we would uncover a fossil of something quite similar to a modern organism, for those are common. If paleontologists had examined objectively the axiom of pterosaur extinction, over the past 200 years, they would have noticed what few have considered: As each new pterosaur genus was uncovered, by fossil discoveries, the probability of a modern version increased. Experts now have dozens of those genera to consider, yet how few paleontologists have examined the universal-pterosaur-extinction axiom itself! [page 295]

Science and mathematics

Statistical analysis proves that hoaxes could not have played a major part in the 128 sighting reports that I researched by the end of 2012. This is in simple math, easy for most adults to understand. I don’t know why Dr. Prothero mentioned nothing about statistics in eyewitness testimonies, but if he had, it would have reflected badly on his case for trying to persuade people to dismiss from their minds the possibility of any modern pterosaur. How much easier to use bulverism to convince followers that I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have been dishonest! Please note, I am not accusing Dr. Prothero of dishonesty; I am replying to his accusations of deceit.

Of course my use of math in that situation relates to the lack of hoaxes, not misidentification possibilities. But if many eyewitnesses have been telling the truth, what about the possibility that I too have been honest? And what if the ropen really is real?

Both statements in each post are false, yet some of my proper use of two pseudonyms may resemble improper usage, so this needs to be explained in detail. . . . To publicize details about the encounters with apparent pterosaurs, I needed some way to emphasize those reports without my name getting in the way. [a perfectly valid reason to use a pen name]

. . . It gives me some hope that Prothero was making an honest mistake, when he included that link; nevertheless, his post appears sure to lead his readers astray from the truth, not only about my motivations but about investigations of living-pterosaur sighting reports in general. I must respond.

I continue to receive eyewitness reports of apparent living pterosaurs, as I have for the past eleven years. The following are some of the more recent emails: West Virginia (Oct of 2014) . . . Minnesota (Nov of 2014) [note: this post was written on Nov 29, 2014]

Did you know that the living-pterosaurs investigations that started in the mid-1990’s were in Papua New Guinea? Some reports were of large flying creatures that were covered with hair. The Woetzel-Guessman expedition of 2004 (a few weeks after my own expedition) involved detailed questionnaires, the main one being two pages long. There was also a silhouette page: 34 images of birds, bats, and pterosaurs.

I am shocked that somebody with so much education would make so many mistakes, indeed errors that are facing 180 degrees away from reality. But I do not accuse this man of dishonesty, for I cannot see into his mind or into his heart. Being honest or dishonest is, after all, about one’s intention. Those who search diligently will find the truth.

PterosaursComments Off on Are Bats Food for Pterodactyls in Los Angeles?

Aug042012

Insect-eating bats in Los Angeles County are common. I remember watching them dart over my head, after sunset, when I was a youth in Pasadena, California. I no longer watch for bats at night, although one of the furry little creatures recently seems to have turned up in a photo recorded by my game camera. I now watch for a pterodactyl in Lakewood.

I recently set up a game camera over a storm channel near where an apparent ropen (a modern pterosaur) was seen clearly in daylight. I believe the flying creature is nocturnal, like most ropens. But I have not yet gotten a photo of a ropen. I have seen a number of photos in which a blur is seen flying nearly parallel to the storm channel; at first, I thought they were large insect-eating bats, possibly the Big Brown Bat, but today I noticed that those blurs are part of a cloud of dust raised by the family dog that sometimes runs along the fence where the game camera is set up. Nevertheless, I have found one photo that may show a bat in flight.

The blur at the top of photo is probably not a bat, for it is too indistinct and floats to the left in subsequent photos over the next 0.4 seconds (I now believe it is a dust particle). I believe that the two tiny rods are insects, but the apparent orientation of the blur (seeming to fly toward the insects) is coincidental. I admit my mistake in my original interpretation of the above photo, but the investigation continues.

The long vertical objects on the left of the frame are vines growing on the east wall, down into the channel, similar to the vines on the right. At the bottom, the union of the east wall and channel floor shows channel direction (lower left to upper right).

The long object on the left of the above IR-night photo might be interpreted as a flying insect close to the camera lens. The problem with that interpretation is that the light reflected from the strange object is similar in intensity to the light reflected from the vines in the middle of the frame, which are over thirty feet away from the camera. An insect close enough to make that large of an image would have had to have been much closer, and therefore should have been brighter than the leaves of those vines. In addition, a closer look at this long object shows no evidence of insect wing-flapping, at least from what I have seen.

The above image I processed in three small places:

apparent left ear of the apparent bat

apparent right ear

apparent leading edge of the right wing

(To see more detail, click on this photo and then click again on the left side, getting a second magnification.)

I greatly increased both contrast and lightening to those three small parts of the photo, so my own bat-head interpretation may have introduced a bias in this processed image. I know that the body of the apparent bat appears too long, but what else could this object be?

Do Pterodactyls eat Bats?

Of course, none of the above is evidence that “pterodactyls” (pterosaurs) prey upon bats in Lakewood, California. The general concept that modern pterosaurs prey upon bats is found in other locations and is still circumstantial. A ropen flying at night through a storm channel in Los Angeles County might be chasing after a rat or baby possum when it flies right past a bat. But we need to keep an open mind to whatever we find in future game-camera photos and future security video recordings.

Do Pterosaurs Really Live in Los Angeles County?

During my teenaged years in Pasadena, when I enjoyed watching small bats at night, my younger sister had a friend, Dianne. She told my sister about the big “pterodactyl” she had seen flying around the mountains north of Pasadena. I don’t offer that as evidence that pterosaurs eat bats, but as evidence for the following: The more people talk about reports of living pterosaurs, the more additional eyewitness accounts come to light, and the more likely that people will share their own encounters. Some of those encounters have been in Los Angeles County.

. . . she remembered something that happened at night, about a year earlier. She saw something fly through the storm canal, and she heard the dogs barking, one after another, as the creature must have been flying past the backyards . . .

An apparent ropen was seen by a 38-year-old lady in her backyard, in Lakewood, California, on June 19, 2012, at about noon. She at first estimated the wingspan . . . at least six feet. The tail was long, perhaps four feet long, and the end of the tail had a triangular appearance that caused the lady to think “dragon.”

An apparent ropen was seen by a 38-year-old lady in her backyard, in Lakewood, California, on June 19, 2012, at about noon. She at first estimated the wingspan at about five to six feet, later revising her estimate to at least six feet. The tail was long, perhaps four feet long, and the end of the tail had a triangular appearance that caused the lady to think “dragon.”

The lady’s husband told me that he had noticed an absence of possums in the past twelve months; they used to run along the phone lines often, but they seem to have almost disappeared. The only he has seen in recent months was not on the phone line but on a fence. The eyewitness saw the flying creature sitting on the phone line, so it seems likely to be a predator that eats possums and probably rats.

I found it significant that the sighting was above a storm channel that is about twenty feet wide and almost as deep. The size of the flying predator described by the eyewitness makes it seem reasonable that it could easily fly in that storm channel at night, provided it could see well in the dark, as some nocturnal animals can. In other parts of the world, the ropen is said to fly at night.

Science writer Brian Switek, in an August, 2010, post for the online Smithsonian Magazine, titled his remarks “Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth.” He may have gotten unanimous approval for pointing out that a photo of a frigate bird is not evidence for living pterosaurs, but he got a stern rebuke for mentioning the word “hucksters” for those who search for cryptids many had assumed have been extinct for millions of years, especially those who have searched in Papua New Guinea for the ropen. The rebuke was from the cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb.

Brian Switek was correct in one point: The news reporter Terrence Aym fell into a serious blunder in referring to an image of a common Frigate Bird as if it were a ropen or pterosaur. (But Switek’s blunders are so serious that I will not even link to his blog post.)

In Whitcomb’s book Live Pterosaurs in America, the “Mesozoic Objection” in regard to the extinction of pterosaurs is criticized as follows:

What about the “Mesozoic” objection? One critic declares that a lack of “post-Mesozoic remains” (no fossils in “less-ancient” rock strata) proves a pterosaur could not live in modern times. But a subtle form of circular reasoning lies buried within this declaration about fossil rocks.

When a creature thought to have lived only in the Mesozoic time period is found in an undated stratum, what happens? That stratum is then labeled “Mesozoic.” So if a pterosaur fossil can cause it to be “ancient,” what can be reasonably concluded about an apparent lack of any pterosaur fossils in rocks not labeled “ancient?” Not a lack of modern pterosaurs. Standard-model labeling of strata relies a great deal on the axiom of ancient extinctions of certain organisms, and axioms are assumptions, not proven facts.

Switek seems to have entirely failed to comprehend what is entailed here. If the discovery of a modern living Coelacanth could have opened up the way for dating some Coelacanth fossils as being after the Mesozoic, the discovery of a modern living pterosaur could open up the way for dating some pterosaur fossils as also being more recent. This perspective was probably entirely overlooked by Switek.

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From a review of the second edition (Amazon.com):

“This is an updated review of the book and I am changing my rating to 5 stars. This book has been on my shelf for almost a year now. I pick it up every now and then and a part of me becomes more impressed by the book every time. Yes, the skeptics will laugh at it, but I am a skeptic to. Admittedly, my main interest in the subject is based in romanticism. However, it is apparent that these pterosaur stories will not go away.” (book review by Stevie, Oct 23, 2011, second edition of the book)

Live Pterosaurs in America

The third edition of this non-fiction cryptozoogy book was published in November of 2011. This is the expanded version with more eyewitness sightings of live pterosaurs in the United States, including the Carson sighting in Cuba.